Response to Thomas Barfield, “The Islamic State As an Empire Ofnostalgia”

Response to Thomas Barfield, “The Islamic State as an Empire ofNostalgia” Franck Salameh IfI may, I wish to both agree and take issue with parts ofTom Bar- field’s conclusion that ISIS is an “empire ofnostalgia” seeking to recreate a lost “golden age.” This is an exquisitely accurate assessment, suggesting that an exercise such as ISIS may be “based on illusions” and may therefore prove to be ephemeral. By osmosis, this also diminishes the tenacity and resilience ofthe Islamic State itself, and devalues the legitimacy of its religious bearings. However, such an assessment nevertheless ignores the tenacity and resilience ofboth empire and religion in the Middle East. For example, suggesting that secular nationalism as a principle and basis ofgov- ernment, as well as a source ofpolitical legitimacy, may trump other models in the Middle East ignores the staying power ofthese forces in the region. To wit, even in presumably secular, modern Middle Eastern societies such as Turkey, more citizens readily identify as Muslims first and foremost than as citizens ofa “secular” republic. Surmising otherwise is a reflection ofpost-religious Western biases, not time-honored Muslim norms. Furthermore, secular nationalism and the pretense of secular nationalism are not necessarily identical when it comes to ideas and political cultures ofthe Middle East: the former may be secular; the latter only parades secular ostentations. doi: 10.17613/rxh3-6s83 Mizan 1 (2016): 187–194 188 Franck Salameh And so, I would like to push back with two—perhaps combustive —suggestions to flesh out Barfield’s assessment: First, that ISIS may indeed be the norm in the longue durée of Middle Eastern history, rather than the exception; Second, that the secular state (particularly the current crumbling Arab-defined state system in the Middle East) is the exception to the rule, and may not have the staying power once attributed to it. In other words, places like “Syria”—and in some Western and pan-Arabist circles “Greater Syria”—or for that matter Jordan or Iraq and the rest, are modern inventions that never achieved legitimacy. ISIS, on the other hand, may hold both legitimacy and authenticity. It is true that Muslim-majority countries (or some Muslim majority countries) in the Arab-defined Middle East might have trotted out secular ideals with great zeal throughout the twentieth century. But to suggest that, say, the Ba’ath in Syria and Iraq, or Nasserism in Egypt, or the jamāhiriyyah (socialist populism) of Libya, or the monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, and the rest (which, incidentally, all proudly flaunt their kings’ direct descent from the Prophet Muḥammad)—to suggest that the above somehow drew their political legitimacy, and therefore their staying power, from secular—as opposed to religious—principles and traditions, is to paint too bright and optimistic a picture of realities that may point into darker corners of Middle Eastern societies and history. Government in places like Iraq, Syria, Egypt and the rest in the Arab-defined Middle East, in spite of their proclaimed secular attributes (which may be more meaningful to Western audiences than to locals) remain governments of deeply religious societies and political cultures, drawing legitimacy chiefly from religion—from Islam to be exact. It is politically soothing for Western pundits (and the Western aca- demy in particular) to diminish the centrality of religion in Middle Response to Barfield, "The Islamic State as an Empire ofNostalgia" 189 Eastern lives. Yet the political realities of the Middle East remain inti- mately entwined with religion. This is easily illustrated with one example from my own world of references. In the mid-1970s, during one of the numerous fitful ‘pinnacles’ of Arab nationalist fervor that were then dismantling the Lebanese state (perhaps at that time the region’s only non-Muslim entity outside of Israel), Syria’s dictator Hafez al-Assad, in those days the leading man of “secular” Arabism, had to extort a fatwā edict from Lebanon’s supreme Shi’a cleric, Mūsā al-Ṣadr, confirming the Alawites’ Shi’ite Muslim pedi- gree—Alawites who incidentally wedded Phoenician paganism, metem- psychosis, Christian Trinitarianism, and Greek and Gnostic conceptions of divinity to what traditional Muslims may consider only nominally, even dubiously, Islamic practices. Now, why would Assad seek a religious affidavit shoring up his Mus- lim credentials if his prerogatives as a ruler stemmed from “secular” sources in an ostensibly secular, Arab nationalist Syria? Because in multi- ethnic, multi-religious, polyglot Syria, the “secular” Ba’athist state consti- tution still mandated that the president of the republic be a Muslim—and Assad was obviously, in the eyes of many, not considered a Muslim. Al- though this is only one example that confirms the rule across the board in the Middle East, there are many other parallels to it. One ought to try to be a Coptic Christian president of Egypt, for instance. True, the Arab nationalism trotted out by Syria’s Assad (and his Ba’athist clone in Iraq, and others elsewhere) had initially been a secular creed at its inception in the early twentieth century. But this early secular Arab nationalism was in the main the creed of Arabophone Christians, intelligible only to them and other non-Muslim minorities at the time. That is, secular nationalism was the doctrine of non-Muslims preoccupied with building a post-Ottoman polity for themselves where they would no longer be relegated to second-class dhimmitude (officially tolerated under Islamic law but sometimes subject to discriminatory rules and restrictions) living by the sufferance of a Muslim state, often enduring persecution, discrimination, and the indignity of a devalued existence. But a secular Arabism denuded of its Muslim content ultimately proved 190 Franck Salameh unintelligible, and therefore unattractive, to the bulk of the Muslims of the late Ottoman period. Even Michel Aflaq, the Damascene Greek Orthodox Christian founder of the Arab Ba’ath Party—a committed secularist by all accounts but nevertheless a Christian secularist—even he could not escape the centrality of Islam in his neighborhood, and the centrality of Islam to the secular Arab nationalism that he promoted. He conceded that being an ‘Arab’ and being a ‘Muslim’ were complementary, if not synonymous. From the time of the Prophet Muḥammad to the time of the prophet of Arab nationalism—Michel Aflaq himself also adopted the name Muḥam- mad in later years—during that time period, spanning some fourteen centuries, little has changed in the sense that identity and self-awareness under Islam have always been religious. So in a sense, not only is there no opposition between Islam and the so-called secular Arab nationalism of the modern Middle Eastern state system; indeed, there is a great deal of conflation, and harmony, and cooperation, and synonymity. Secular Ba’athist doctrine as articulated by Michel Aflaq held that the Prophet Muḥammad was also, in point of fact, the founder of the Arab nation and was to be venerated as such by every Arab nationalist, whether Muslim or not. Indeed, Aflaq himself practiced what he preached and is believed to have converted to Islam.1 He was anyway given a Mus- lim state funeral in Iraq in 1989. There are many adages in the literature of Arab nationalism that confirm the fact that secularism as a source of legitimacy in the post- Ottoman, Arab-defined Middle East is at best a pipe dream that defies the region’s laws of nature, which remain overwhelmingly defined by religion (which is to say, defined by Islam). For instance, a leading Iraqi Arab nationalist writer, ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Bazzāz, noted that Islam is the religion of the Arabs (and by the Arabs), par excellence. “There could in no way be a contradiction between Islam and Arabism,” stressed Bazzāz.2 Another writer from the same school agreed, maintaining that “Islam is the other face of Arabism.”3 Munāḥ al-Ṣulḥ, a prominent Leban- ese Arab-nationalist theorist, confirmed his cohorts’ attitudes, claiming Response to Barfield, "The Islamic State as an Empire ofNostalgia" 191 that “Islam is another name for Arab nationalism.”4 Even Michel Aflaq himself is noted to have claimed repeatedly that “Islam is to Arabism what bones are to the flesh.”5 But perhaps most significantly, the logo of the Arab League itself—an ‘Arab’ and not a ‘Muslim’ league, one ought to remember—is emblazoned with a fragment of a verse from Sūrat Āl ʿImrān of the Qurʾān, which reads: “You are the finest nation (ummah) that has been brought forth to mankind.”6 So, in conclusion: ISIS is indeed an “empire of nostalgia,” but it is grounded in nostalgia that stands on solid historical ground—nostalgia that is to many more real than reality itself. The brief “secular” interlude in the Middle East of the early twentieth century was exactly that: brief, and just an interlude. It was also the exception to the rule. The rule was and remains: empire and religion, tightly conjoined—a fusion that long preceded Islam, or even monotheism. “Secularism” is an absurdity in the Middle East. Empire (and indeed theocratic empire) can be said to be a Middle Eastern invention. From the time of the Sumerians to ISIS in our time, the pattern has been one of discontinuity and change, and many iterations of cultures and rulers; but empire in varied incarnations has remained unchanged, and Islam as a badge and rationale for empire has endured. ISIS is in line with that time-honored pattern. Islam, after all, to the majority of Middle Easterners (not only to the ISIS types) is the pinnacle of human existence; whatever came before Islam is not worth remembering, let alone preserving—and ISIS is making good on that principle.

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